


30 Going on 13

by JustGettingBy



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Family, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Introspection, Reflection, They all need therapy, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-04 15:32:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17900807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustGettingBy/pseuds/JustGettingBy
Summary: Saving the world was easy, but being 13 again? Not so much.





	1. Five

Five welcomes the familiar headache that comes with landing in the past: it means he made it. He didn’t know if he would - not for sure - he’d never taken anyone besides himself when jumping, let alone five other people. 

_ Six _ , he corrects himself. Ben is back. His face is the same as when Five left. They’re all the same as when he left, from their round faces to their buttoned-down uniforms. It would almost be comforting if it wasn’t so messed up. 

“Everyone alright?” he asks, brushing off the dust from his shorts.

“Just peachy,” Klaus says with a laugh. He smacks his palms against his face and runs his thumb and index finger over his bare chin. Klaus is still standing - he fared better on the trip to the past than the others. It’s not his first rodeo either. 

Allison and Luther nod. Vanya’s still unconscious in the latter’s arms.  _ We’ll deal with that later _ , Five thinks. 

Diego groans from the stage floor. “I need a drink.”

Five catches his chuckle in his throat. “Good luck with that.” He helps Diego to his feet. “We’ve got another eight years to go.”

“Fuck that,” Diego says. He stumbles on his feet, not steady yet. 

Five shakes his head wistfully. “Welcome to my world.”

Klaus laughs again. He kicks his legs in front of him and wiggles his arms. “This feels good,” he says. “ _ I _ , for one, feel good.” He loops his arm around Ben’s and heaves him up. “Turns out the best way to get sober is just by time-traveling seventeen years into the past to avoid the apocalypse caused by your sister’s repressed superpower!” He shakes his head and fakes a sigh. “Why don’t they lead with that at AA?”

Ben pulls Klaus into a hug, muffling whatever next quip was forming on Klaus’ lips. Ben’s a fair bit shorter than the rest of them - his head only reaches Klaus’ shoulder. After a squeeze, he lets go. “Hi guys,” he says shyly. 

Allison cries. She jumps up and rushes to him. “I missed you,” she whispers to him as she hugs him. She rubs her throat, carefully touching her markless skin. “It worked,” she says to Five.

“Of course it did,” Five says, shrugging. 

Allison’s relief sours. She slaps Klaus on the shoulder. “You idiots didn’t listen to me.” 

“Ow,” Klaus whines and rubs his shoulder, even though Allison hardly hit him more than she’d swat a fly. “I wanted to listen to you, I really did, but I got stuck as lookout again.” 

“Which you did great at by the way,” Diego says. He runs his hand over his smooth face the same way Klaus had. 

“You can all complain about that later,” Five says. He gets it's confusing to wake up as a thirteen-year-old again, he really does, but they don’t have time for this. They especially don’t have time for whatever blow out Luther and Allison are about to have.  “We need to get back to the academy.”

At the mention of the academy, everyone stills. 

“We what now?” Diego asks.

Five jumps down from the stage and starts toward the theatre’s exit. He grins at the ceiling - still intact. In the night sky, the moon will still be shining brightly. “The academy,” he repeats. “Dad will be looking for us soon, if he hasn’t noticed we’re gone already.”

“We can’t go back there.” Luther shakes, and not from Vanya’s weight. 

“Sorry big guy,” Five says, even though Luther’s not so big anymore. “Can’t risk deviating from the set timeline until I figure out our best course of action.”

“So what? We’re just supposed to let Dad mess us all up again?” Diego shakes his head. “I won’t stand by.”

“No - the whole point of this is specifically  _ not  _ to let Dad mess anyone up. Especially Vanya.” The whole team looks her, unconscious still, in Luther’s arms. 

“Okay,” Allison says, her voice trembling. “This is only worth it if we make it worth it.” The boys quiet at her statement. 

They leave the theatre, the seven of them together for the first time in seventeen years, for them. Forty-five years for Five. 

The city streets in 2002 look different than he remembers. It’s strange, Five thinks, how easily he slips into new time periods. He can be at ease in the 1960s or 1060s. But maybe it’s not so strange when he really gets into it. After all, people, in their hearts, never change. In every era, there are caring mothers, star-crossed lovers, righteous pricks. Siblings, for better or for worse.

Five feels uneasy here. 2002 should’ve been a familiar coat to slip on and pretend nothing is different. But everywhere he looks his skin crawls. Warns him not to fall into a comfortable pattern here. 

The Commission knows what he did. There’s nowhere in time he can hide from them, they have all of eternity to find him. He knows he can find a way out of it, he has no other choice, but seventeen years is an awful long time to hide. And if they fail again... he doesn’t want to think about doing this all over. 

“God,” Diego whispers.  He stares at the academy, still standing, with all of its gloomy arches and darkened windows. 

“Met her,” Klaus says. He doesn’t take his eyes off the building either. “She's a bit harsh for my liking.”

“I’ll go and unlock the door from the inside.” Five studies his siblings. “Then we go to our beds. Pretend everything is normal. Ready?” They nod. He knows they’re not. 

Five jumps into the darkened academy and opens the door. 


	2. Luther

Five opens the door and gives Luther the half-smile he’s been giving everyone lately. Luther couldn’t remember Five’s face ever looking quite like that before he left - like he can’t muster up a full smile unless it’s sarcastic. Luther reasons a lifetime alone must be hard to shake; he can’t imagine the desolation. Four years alone was enough to test Luther’s mind. A lifetime, for Luther, is unthinkable.

  
Walking back into the academy is also unthinkable, but hey, Luther’s doing it right now. Everything Luther thought he knew about the world last week - hell, everything he thought he knew about the world yesterday - is wrong. He doesn’t know what to make of that.

  
He holds Vanya tight, still uneasy with her in his arms. He doesn’t want her to wake up anytime soon; there’s no telling what she’ll do. If she starts to panic again, she could jump right back into her apocalyptic meltdown. He watched her murder Pogo. She tried to kill Allison.

Luther knew she was hurting - who didn’t get messed up by their father - but he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her. Not yet, in any case. The Hargreeves children always had a quiet understanding of each other's lives and an even quieter agreement to pretend like all the messed up shit wasn’t actively ruining their lives. Vanya blew all that up when she released her book; Luther never wanted to revisit his childhood again, and then she laid it bare to the whole world.

  
But here he was, back at 13, in his small uniform that he never that would’ve fit again.

  
He certainly never thought he’d see the academy again, either. Not after Vanya destroyed it. It’s uncanny; he finds himself looking for some mistake, any misplaced detail, that could prove to him this isn’t the mansion, that it’s all an elaborate hoax.

  
He can’t say anything out of place. He should know. He spent longer here than any of his siblings.

  
“Stay quiet,” Five says and leads them deeper into the house. “I haven’t seen dear old Dad yet, but we’ve already pushed our luck enough today.”

  
Luther nods, shifts Vanya’s weight in his arms, and follows Five. He’s been doing a lot of following lately. Privately, he likes it more than leading. He always has.

There’s less pressure in following. There’s room to make mistakes, room to be weak, room to fail. Room to grow. 

  
His feet fall heavy on the tiled floors. His strength is back, which will take some adjustment. Whatever was in the serum that saved his life also cut back his power; in the future he left Luther was only slightly stronger than normal. He’d forgotten what it was like to send grown men twice his size flying across the room. Before he reigned in his powers he’d crushed more doorknobs and broke more faucets than he could count.

  
When he finally pulls his attention back to what’s in front of him, he sees that all his siblings look just as lost and as shocked as he feels - except Five, of course, who just walks ahead with confidence. He, Luther thinks, is probably wondering if he can convince Grace to give him a coffee tomorrow morning.

  
“Where should I put Vanya?” Luther whispers.

  
Five pauses for a moment. “Her bed, I suppose. I’ll wait with her until morning and explain it all when she comes to.”

  
Luther supposes that’s as good a plan as any. He tucks her in with care, he’s not a total monster, despite what everyone else seems to think, and slinks off with Klaus, Allison, Diego, and Ben.

  
Ben. Luther can’t even look at him properly. Not without that tinge of guilt. He thinks by now he should be accustom to it, but the familiar pit in his stomach only grows with time. 

  
Diego slips off to his room next. Ben goes shortly after.

  
He walks upstairs with Klaus and Allison.   
At the top, his Father stands. His arms are folded in front of his chest, his face twists into a deep frown. “Children out of bed,” he says. “Unacceptable. I thought better of you; you all know the rules.”

  
Luther feels, for the first time, like he really is thirteen again. His chest tightens with his father’s disapproval and the familiar ringing in his ears rises as the world becomes distant.

  
He doesn’t lose himself this time, though. The anger grounds him.

  
Luther curls his hand into a fist. One punch. That’s all it would take. He could ruin his father’s life this time around; he’d call the justice poetic if he’d ever read any poetry.

  
“My fault, unfortunately,” Klaus says before Luther can even string together enough cohesion to speak, let alone act. “I heard about some brilliant new orchestra playing down at the Icarus Theatre. Got the date wrong, though. We went to early.”

  
He wishes that, for once in his life, Klaus would be quiet. Luther closes his eyes and takes a deep breath to calm down. He’s frozen as he pictures what his father would do if he found out the truth.

  
“Hmm.” Reginald looks down his nose at the three of them standing in the empty hall. “Cultural activities are permissible, granted they enhance your overall education. Next time, you shall bring this forward to me if you wish to go.”

  
“Of course, Father,” Klaus says, clasping together his hands in fake sorrow. “Can you ever forgive me?”

  
“To bed,” Reginald says, and Luther isn’t about to argue. They move down the hall, well aware their father is studying their every move. As Klaus opens his door, Reginald speaks again. “We shall do extra training tomorrow, number four, to make up for your misjudgement and ensure it does not happen again.”

  
“Of course,” Klaus seethes. He pulls his door shut with a shaking hand.

  
Luther turns to Allison before he walks into his own room. “Goodnight.”

  
She doesn’t look at him. “Goodnight, Luther.” Her voice trembles.

  
In his room, Luther stares out window and up at the sky. The moon is still there. Still whole.   
Did he really spend four years up there?

It feels like it could all be a bad dream now.

  
It felt like a bad dream then, if he was being honest.

  
There were beautiful moments, he could be honest about that. He misses the serenity of watching the earthrise each morning. He misses the sense of purpose he had, misses believing he was going to help save the earth.

  
He didn’t save anything in the end. He only made it worse in every way.   
Maybe his father had the right idea, sending him up there.

  
Luther sighs and peels off his uniform top. His pale, smooth torso looks out of place. There’s only a light dusting of blond hair that covers his arms.

  
He sits down in front of the mirror. How is he any different than his father? The moment Vanya frightened him, he just locked her away instead of dealing with the root of the problem.

  
Luther wants to scream. He slams his fist against the floorboard and starts as the wood splinters. Shit. He brushes the loose pieces under his bed.

  
Luther doesn’t get up from the floor. He lies down, under the moonlight, and lets the tears trickle down his face.

  
He wonders what his life would’ve been like if he was number two or six or three. He’d welcome the change without hesitation.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes - Luther made some bad choices. So did everyone else. I think he deserves sympathy. Not everyone copes with trauma in the same way.


	3. Allison

The moment Allison closes her bedroom door, she lets out a strangled sob. It’s a relief to hear her voice again. At thirteen, she had only been in one movie. Of course, the first time around she had her sights set on being a famous actress. Not that she ever practiced. If Allison is honest, she knows her performances are all quite awful. She can never get it perfect: there’s always a flubbed line, awkward pace, a lack of emotion that graces her face on the silver screen. 

She’s not going to be famous this time. 

It is not worth it. 

She tears the poster of her smiling pre-teen face off the wall, crumples it into a ball, and tosses it in the bin. Her pink-feathered boa follows. A pile of teen gossip magazines go next. Five minutes later, her room is gutted. It’s a shell of itself, but she likes it better this way.

She wipes her face with a tissue and throws it into the overflowing garbage bin.  Allison sits on her bed but doesn’t slip under the covers. Falling asleep would make it real, she thinks. She resolves to stay awake until the sun comes. Then Five will fix everything. He has to. 

If he doesn’t, she’ll never see Claire again. She realized that while on the walk home. Her daughter isn’t born yet. If Allison tries to be  _ better _ this time, Claire never will be born. 

There will be no plastic princess tiaras. No bubblegum-scented bath soap. No pink-knit cap from the hospital and no teddy bear swathed cloth to wrap her little girl in. 

Allison falls against her bed and lets the tears flow. She couldn’t cry in front of the boys. No of them would have understood - they would’ve just been awkward. 

None of them realized what the time hop means for Allison. She wonders if they’ll figure it out by morning or if she’ll have to break the news to them. Knowing the boys, she guesses she’ll have to tell them. Even with her voice back, she’s not certain she will be able to find any words to describe the deep ache in her chest. 

None of them have children. The rest of them had strings of lovers, but there is something different about her love for her baby. Her love for Claire had always been tinged by fear. Fear of losing her. Fear of not being a good enough mother. From the first time her baby wrapped her whole hand around Allison’s pinky, she knew there would never be anything she could love more.

And now Claire is gone. 

Isn’t losing their child every parent’s worst nightmare?

_ Except Dad _ . He’d been indifferent when Five disappeared. When Ben died, he had the decency to at least pretend to look vaguely upset.

Allison shifts and sits upright. She hates this room. Even empty, it still reminds her of everything she hates about herself. 

The exhaustion behind her eyes grows into a dry ache and her head pounds from crying, but Allison refuses to close her eyes. She won’t let herself get comfortable here. 

She stands and presses her ear against the wall of her bedroom like she has so many times before. From Luther’s room, she hears movement. The floorboards shift: he’s awake. 

Allison opens her door slowly, trying to avoid the shrill groan that the rusted hinges make. As a kid, she made this trip a few times a year. She was always careful not to push her luck - it would only take being caught once to ruin her trips forever - but today she decides it’s worth the risk.

She pushes Luther’s door open and feels the heat rise in her cheeks. 

As a kid, she and Luther were joined at the hip. But they haven’t been close, not really, in a long time. They drifted apart long before Luther left for the moon. They were already drifting apart when she left for Hollywood. Allison is aware she is intruding on a personal moment for Luther, a moment he might not want her to witness.

“Sorry,” she mumbles and closes the door.

“No, it’s alright,” Luther says. He wipes off his cheeks and tries to pretend he hasn’t been crying. “Come on in.”

Allison steps in and closes the door. Luther is so  _ small _ . He’s strong, for sure, but his limbs are lanky - there’s no bulk to his frame. His bony elbows knock against his loose blue pajama top. 

“How are you holding up?” He brushes his blond hair awkwardly. 

Allison tries to tell him she’s fine. Tell him that she’s going to make through the night. The words don’t come; she’s robbed of her voice once more. 

Instead, she pulls Luther in close and muffles her cry in the crook of his neck. 

“Hey, hey,” he says, wrapping his arms around her. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” She looks at him with her tear-burn eyes. 

He looks at her, puzzled for a moment. His face drops. “Claire.”

Allison can only nod. Luther doesn’t tell her it will be okay. He must know she won’t be. “If I go to sleep,” she says, her voice ragged from crying, “it’ll be real when I wake up.”

“Then we don’t have to go to sleep. I’ll stay with you until the morning comes.”

He does. 


	4. Vanya

Vanya’s head aches more than the one and only time she drank in college.

She shifts under in the warmth of her bed and keeps her eyes closed. There’s a familiar and comfortable peace in burrowing into the nest of knit blankets. She frowns, though. Something is _off._ The sheet she pulls up scratches her skin. The bed is smaller than it was last night.

She snaps her eyes open.

Soft light filters through the gap between the old grey curtains. _This isn’t my room._

She jolts up and throws her covers off. A hint of a scream ghosts across her lips. This isn’t right, it can’t be right, she left this place long ago, she never would come back, but she _was_ back, but it wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t different either and she _can’t_ be here, it’s not real, and -

“Vanya,” Five says. He’s resting on the floor with his back against her door.

She stops.

The memory, swathed in cotton, rises in her head. She brought the walls down. She left this place as rubble.

“Five?” She looks at her hands, so small and delicate. The callouses on her fingertips are only starting to form; they’re not yet hardened by the years she’s spent working the violin.

“I’m here,” he says. He stands and puts his hands in his pockets. He walks over, staring at her, and sits on the edge of the bed. “How’s your head?”

“It hurts."

He nods. “Normal side effects will disappear in 24 hours. Of course, with your uh, _unique_ situation, it might last a bit longer.”

She bits her lip and nods along. She doesn’t know how to bring it up.

“How much do you remember?” Five looks at her earnestly.

“It’s coming back,” she admits, “but it’s still hazy.”

“It might never be entirely clear. There’s still so much we don’t know about your power.” Five stands and paces around her room. Vanya stays frozen in her bed, unsure of what to do next. “And, of course, there’s the matter of your medication. I’m assuming you won’t want to take it.”

“I think that goes without saying.”

“But if you have even the slightest slip, Dad will know something is wrong, and then the whole chain of events could be altered. I’d never be able to calculate the dissonance from such a big change.”

“Oh.”

He shakes his head. “We’ll get through it, Vanya.”

She tries to nod her head in agreement, but she’s still frozen in her place. “What if I ruin it all again?”

“You won’t.” Five comes back over and sits next to his sister. “Besides, we have all the time in the world, don’t we? Even if it takes us a hundred lifetimes, we’ll get it right in the end.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. Especially not any of you.” She looks at Five’s tired eyes. “You have to believe me. It was all an accident. I was scared and angry and confused and I couldn’t control -”

“I know.” He smiles at her - the first real smile he’s given anyone in a long time. “I’m the last person you have to justify yourself to.”

“Really?”

“Really. We all made mistakes, in case you didn’t notice.”

“And so this time we’re just supposed to ... not make mistakes?”

“Not the same ones, at any rate. I’m working on a plan but -” Five stops. There’s a steady creak of footsteps falling in the hall. The red alarm clock on Vanya’s table flashes _6:52_. They have eight minutes before the alarm will ring, and then fifteen more minutes before they’re expected - dressed and washed and ready to go - at the breakfast table.

“Anyway,” Five continues, “I’m working on a plan. Give me a week. We just need to lay low for now.”

Vanya nods and shifts out of her bed. When she was grown, 13-year-old Five was nearly the same height as her. Now, she only comes up to his nose. “Thank you,” she says. “I missed you, the first time around.”

“I missed you too, Vanya.” He stops for a moment, looking wistfully out her small window. “We can all be better, this time around.”


	5. Ben

Ben has never been so happy to taste oatmeal. 

If he had a choice, he would’ve picked chocolate-chip pancakes, the ones Mom made for their birthday, as his first meal. Or the happy plate of sunny-side-up eggs and bacon they had on weekends and holidays. 

But Ben doesn’t mind the oatmeal. More than that, he thinks it might be the best damn meal he’s ever had. 

Mom swirled a ribbon of cinnamon through the mix. He notes the sweetness as it mixes with the sour slices of green apple she’d sliced in. More than anything, he loves the warmth. It’s warmth on his tongue - not enough to burn his lips - and the warmth that flows through his body as he swallows. It staves off the ever-present chill that haunted his body for thirteen years. He never thought he’d feel true heat again. 

Around the table, his red-eyed siblings keep stealing glances in his directions. They look at him - well, they look at him like they’ve seen a ghost.

Except for Klaus. Ben is thankful for that. 

He throws a smile whenever Ben glances his way. When they passed each other in the hall that morning, Klaus pretended to brush a fleck of dirt off Ben’s shoulder.  _ He needed to know I’m real. That I’m here and I’m staying here.  _

He doesn’t blame Klaus for his doubt. Ben had pinched both of his cheeks in his bedroom mirror when they returned last night. He runs his hand against the smooth wood of the table. 

He waits for the moment he’ll slip right through. 

It doesn’t come. 

That doesn’t stop him from holding his breath in his lungs, waiting for the moment he won’t be in this world. He hopes it will happen fast, unlike last time. 

He’d told Klaus he didn’t remember dying. He said his memory cut out as he stared death in the eyes, and then he woke a week later talking to Klaus. 

Telling the truth - that he couldn’t forget any part of it - wouldn’t have done either of them any good. Not when he was gone. But if they were trying to change things...

“Children!”

Ben starts. He missed a lot when he was dead. His father’s cold gaze was not one of those things. 

“Training will commence at 0800 hours. Do not be tardy.”

They all nodded slowly, unsure of what else to do. Five sent the word around this morning: act ‘normal’ until he mapped out a plan. They couldn’t risk meeting all at once, so their messages spread from lips to ears in secret corners, in half-second passings, in notes written on the steamed bathroom mirror. 

Ben hopes it won’t become the only way they talk. He can’t stand another lifetime of silence from the people he loves the most. 

 

When breakfast is over, they all follow Dad to a staircase in the East-wing. Ben knows the drill well - it’s a favourite of Dad’s. They just have to race to the top.

Even the first time around, Ben never understood it. Either Five would jump ahead, Luther would knock someone aside, or Allison would rumour the leader to slip. Diego always went as fast as he could, even though his abilities gave him no real edge. He just wanted to best Luther. 

Ben and Klaus usually trailed at the back. 

He hates these training exercises. All they do is bring out the nasty, competitive edge in everyone. 

At the top of the staircase, Vanya stands next to their father. She shakes but blows the whistle anyway. 

The rest of the are off. 

Their hearts aren’t in it. 


	6. Diego

If there’s one thing Diego hates more than training, it’s the lessons they take after lunch is over.

Math, English, History - it doesn’t matter. He hates sitting in the stuffy classroom, surrounded by his siblings. Each and every afternoon dragged on. Growing up, Diego’s favourite part of the day was always supper, because it meant that he had as long as possible until the next lesson.

It’s not that he hated learning, despite what the others thought. He loves learning - the world is full of mysteries waiting to be solved. Particle physics aren’t that different from working a case, in his opinion. It’s all a matter of fitting the clues together, no matter the subject.

Diego hates _class_.

When he was very young, Pogo shut down the taunts and snickers whenever Diego stumbled over his words. When he was a teenager, the laughs turned into subtle smirks, into coughs, into glances between the others.

He’d done well at the Police Academy. Not top of the class - Eudora took that honour - but he’d set himself apart from the rest of the class.

Diego let go of the pettiness long ago. So why does it still sting whenever anyone called him stupid?

He drums his pencil against his notebook while Pogo wrote another math problem on the chalkboard. He knows that his siblings’ validation doesn’t define his self-worth, but he still feels the urge to show off how much he knows. He’s smart, damn it, and he’s still sick of the fact that his siblings don’t realize that. Even when he _does_ succeed, it a patronizing ‘good work and a sickly sweet smile always follows.

But even today, when he finally has the chance to show up his siblings and prove he really was smart all along, he doesn’t have the energy. His mind is fifty places at once. He’s looking at Ben. He’s looking at Luther and realizing that maybe his life was better off being number 2. He’s staring at Vanya. Allison. Back to Ben. Klaus. Pogo. It’s all so much to take in at once.

He absentmindedly runs his thumb over the right side of his head, from the place above his ear down to his cheekbone. His skin is smooth.

“Diego?”

He turns to see Pogo looking straight at him from the front of the room. There’s a problem on the board. He could figure it out if he spent a minute it working on it. “I don’t know,” he says instead.

Pogo frowns and shakes his head before moving onto Five. Of course, the little asshole (although they’re technically the same age now) has the right answer. He spent thirty years teaching himself astrophysics to perfect his time jumps. Pogo might as well be asking him what 1+1 equals.

 

When the lesson ends, they have half an hour of free time before they’re expected at the dinner table. Most of them go to the library to read because they know that’s what Dad expects them to do. Diego wanders out to the courtyard and sits in the sun.

It’s different than he remembers. He doesn’t know why that keeps surprising him, but it does. The trees are smaller. There’s no sad statue in the corner.

“Hey,” Klaus says, coming up behind him. “Mind if I sit?” Klaus sits in the grass next to Diego before he answers.

“Go ahead.” Diego usually would’ve made a joke.

“You’re always broody, now don’t get me wrong. You were perfectly downtrodden and miserable before we left,” Klaus says. “But you’re looking even more broody than normal today, and that’s _without_ the leather and stubble and scars.”

Diego sighs. “And you’re not miserable here?”

Klaus shakes his head. “Nope.” He pops the ‘p’. “All sunshine and rainbows over here.”

“We’re 13, stuck with Dad, and can’t even get a drink.”

“The whole ‘13 again’ thing is actually working well to get me sober. I couldn’t get anything stronger than weed if I tried.”

Diego eyes Klaus.

He raises his bare palms in mock surrender. “Not that I would try, of course.”

“Right.” Diego lays in the grass and stares at the clouds shifting past overhead. The low sun catches the edges.

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you.”

Diego closes his eyes and nods.

“Tell me about her.”

“She was brilliant. She just had this way of _getting_ everything and I was part of that everything. Eudora saw the whole picture. But more than that she was determined to make the world a better place. Even after all the shit she saw - and she really did see some shit - she still believed that most people were good. And that the ones who weren’t good could be redeemed.” Diego twists a blade of grass through his fingers. He can’t bring himself to look at Klaus. “Maybe that’s why she had so much faith in me.”

Klaus is silent for a moment. “Sounds like she was completely out of your league.”

Diego snorts in spite of himself. “She was.” He turns to Klaus. His brother’s eyes are also red and so he stops trying to hide. “Sh-she was the first person to tell me I was smart.”

Klaus pauses, his face quiet. “I’m sorry that it wasn’t me.” He looks at Diego earnestly. “Why were we all such dicks to each other?”

“Because it was easier than admitting we cared.”

Klaus nods in agreement. “Where is she now?”

“About a 20-minute drive from here. She’s living with her parents on the edge of the suburbs. A couple of years from now, her parents split up, and she’ll move to an apartment in the city with her dad,” Diego says. "She lives with him for about a two years and then she joins the academy. That's where we meet."

“You know,” Klaus says, “I bet she’d never remember that boy who walked past her in the street once when she was thirteen.”

Diego eyes Klaus. “Five says we shouldn’t change anything...”

Klaus turns and looks Diego straight in the eye. “Some people are worth breaking the rules for.”

If Eudora isn't, than Diego doesn't know who is. 


	7. Klaus

Klaus watches Diego pull the blades of grass out of the ground and twists them under his fingers. Klaus promises Diego they’ll go watch for Eudora, they’ll wait for her to pass by in the park, one day when everything has calmed down.

“I don’t want to wait,” Diego says, “I want to hop in Dad’s car right now and take off. What I wouldn’t give to just knock on her doorstep and see her smile.”

Klaus nods along but finds himself unable to say anything. He understands Diego, of course. He’d give anything for one more day with Dave. 

“Is there anyone you want to see?” Diego asks. 

Klaus realizes he must’ve had a look on his face. Diego, for all he pushed people away, is annoyingly good at reading people. “Not here,” Klaus says. 

Diego sits up. “What was her name?”

“His name was Dave,” Klaus says with a sigh. Diego just nods, understanding. Klaus thought everyone knew just by the, well,  _ everything _ about him. “We soldiered together in the A Shau Valley.”

Diego eyes Klaus. “Must’ve been a special person to put up with your weird-ass shit,” he says, without missing a beat. Klaus laughs. For a moment he can be almost happy. He can pretend they are just thirteen again, with their secret handshake and hidden packs of cigarettes and wild dreams. Almost. 

“Let’s go tomorrow,” Klaus says, a wide smile cutting across his face. “Why wait?”

 

* * *

 

_ Shock is a hell of a drug _ , Klaus thinks as he crawls into bed that night.  _ Stress too.  _ He’s not high, but he’s been shaking all day. Bouncing his leg. Scratching his ear. Klaus needs to keep moving to keep himself distracted. 

Now, as he lays in bed, he can’t distract himself any longer. He stretches out and laces his hands behind his head. The ghosts will come. Soon. It’s a miracle they haven’t already, but Klaus chalks that up to both stress and time travel - his system had enough of a shook to keep everything away, at least for a little while.

He doesn’t mind if they come this time.  

Before, everything had been so horrible. When Klaus was thirteen the first time around, the phantoms disturbed him to his core. The dead were  _ wrong _ . They moaned and wailed and refused to leave him alone. More often than not, they were bloodied and mangled. 

Klaus tried everything to them out of his mind. He found that the cigarettes Diego bought in a bout of teenage rebellion gave him enough of a buzz to ignore the ghosts. Alcohol and weed worked even better. When he was older, he realized that the cocaine, the ecstasy, the heroine - he could make the ghosts disappear entirely. He welcomed the peace, however temporary and unsustainable. 

Then Ben died. 

Klaus knew once again how awful and horrific death was. He was thankful his brother's ghost appeared unmarked. He wouldn’t have been able to stomach it otherwise. If anything, death scared Klaus even more than when he was thirteen.

And then Dave died. 

Klaus closes his eyes and thinks of the strong line of Dave’s jaw. He thinks about the curve of his lips. His soft laugh. 

Dave died horribly and stupidly and much too young. But his death was not an anomaly, it was not a fluke, as Ben’s death had been. Young men died in wars all the time.

Throughout all of history, young men died in pointless wars dreamed up by some rich man who’d never have to spend a day on the frontline. They died for a vision of honour and glory that wasn’t real. They died so the politicians could line their pockets with the money they made selling weapons while they stoked fear at home to secure their place in office for another term. They didn’t care how many Daves died. 

How many had waited forever for their lovers to return?

Klaus will wait forever too. 

All those ghosts he saw, all their haunted messages... Klaus couldn’t blame them for following him. They all had their own Daves. The dead have lovers and siblings and children and friends and parents. Who wouldn’t try to send a message home to their loved ones?

Klaus welcomes the softness of his blankets and the haze of sleep. 

The door creaks. He snaps up. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Ben stands in the doorway, in his size-too-big pajamas. 

“It’s fine. I was awake anyway,” Klaus lies. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. Klaus shuffles over in his bed and Ben crawls in next to him. They had a few secret sleepovers when they were young. “It’s weird being alive again.”

Klaus laughs. “I can only imagine.”

They talk for a while. After so many years with just each other as company, Klaus would’ve thought they’d have run out of topics a long time ago. Today, they debate the best breakfast food: pancakes or waffles. 

“Waffles, without a doubt,” Klaus says. “They’re fancier. Why would you want something as plain as a pancake?”

“Well, that’s the beauty. Pancakes are fantastic  _ because  _ they’re so simple and -”

The door creaks. Klaus and Ben freeze. Klaus closes his eyes and braces for dear-old-and-not-dead-dad’s yells. 

They don’t come. 

“I couldn’t sleep.” Diego stands in the doorway. 

“Come on in,” Klaus says. He and Ben shift over and make room for Diego, who sits on the foot of the bed. 

It’s been years since the three of them sat like this. 

“Pancakes or waffles?” Ben asks.

Diego shakes his head. “Neither. French toast is the obvious choice.”

“Hey, that’s not an option,” Klaus protests. “If I said pick left or right you can’t decide to go straight.”

“You can’t make me choose an option in a flawed survey.” Diego shakes his head, but he’s cracking into laughter - the corners of his mouth are turning up despite his best effort to keep a straight face. 

It feels  _ good _ . Klaus never thought he’d have a night like this again. Who gets a second chance?

Their laughter is split by a blue shimmer and a familiar  _ pop. _ Five stands in front of them. 

“Sure, come on in,” Klaus says. 

“I’ve told everyone to meet here,” he says. “We won’t have long, but it’ll be enough time.”

“You have a plan then?” Diego asks.

Five twists the line of his mouth in thought. “Sort of. More of a lack of a plan, for now at least.”

Klaus sees Ben’s face fall. He can feel the cheerful energy deflate. “Meaning?”

“We do nothing.”

“You mean we’re just supposed to  _ let _ all this fucked up shit happen?” Diego is nearly yelling, but no one makes a move to quiet him. 

“No - no. We can be  _ better _ this time. But we’ve still got to play the long game. Skipping ahead - well, that wouldn’t give us enough time to actually change anything.”   


“So what? We’re just supposed to stay here?”

Five nods. “We’ll have to get comfortable.”

“Fuck,” says Ben. 

Klaus flops back down on his bed and stares at the ceiling. “Fuck,” he agrees. 


End file.
